Would you release a horde of Enforcer Drones on the Earth? (RAR!)

[Zor]

small insect sized remotes, but can also carry up to twelve 3 centimeter long guided missiles which have a 40km range, a top speed of 1,500 km/h and an explosive warhead with the equivalent of 1kg of TNT. Said drone can fly at speeds of up to 300km/h. These drones are also capable of operating a variety of remotes to serve as recon units and manipulators. To interact with humans they can speak and have a projector which will usually display a holographic image of a cartoon police officer, with each drone having it's own distinct holographic avatar that can be either human or some form of anthropomorphic animal, male or female and will have it's own name. About two billion of these units will be deployed on earth and they'll replace losses to maintain said numbers. There are also larger more heavily armed units rated for planetary activity up to including 300 meter wide disc shaped mobile bases, 30 meter long transports, 12 meter long railgun armed "tank" units, 2 meter long "heavy infantry" units, high speed interceptor units as well as orbital support and point defense platforms.

Fortunately the Enforcer Drones have zero interest in enslaving or exterminating humanity. Quite the contrary. Enforcers Drones are here to protect humanity, and for that matter sapient life in general, against itself. They'll do this by enforcing their rules. These are as follows...

1. No killing other sapient beings. EVER. As far as they're concerned there is never such a thing as a good instance of a human being killing another human being. Soldiers, Executioners, Judges which sentence individuals to execution, freedom fighters and so forth are in their eyes are all just murderers, plain and simple. They do discriminate between manslaughter, first and second degree murder and do have (an exceedingly narrow) notion of 'justifiable homicide' in self defense. In the case of manslaughter, justifiable homicide and first offense second degree crimes of passion the standard penalty is to have a drone shadow the individual and make sure they'll never do it again. In case of anything premeditated or repeat second degree murders then they'll reprogram the perp's brain so they won't do it again.
2. No weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are all going to be harvested and recycled, as will weapons like landmines. They'll also shut down the factories that make them and monitor industries that could be put to said effects. Also to varying degrees they'll keep weapons out of the hands of individuals they see as likely to interfere with their directives. Mr inoffensive Deer Hunter can have his trusty Deer Rifle and his collection of WWII guns all he wants so long as he does not cause the Drones any active trouble. If they do, those items are going either into storage or a recycler.
3. No violence. This one is a bit less hard and fast as the murder one goes. For example they are willing to tolerate Boxing matches and BDSM provided that A: both individuals give consent beforehand to a Drone, B: said activity is monitored by a Drone and C: the second they say it's gone too far it stops. Even so they'll never care how much someone was "asking for it" if they get randomly beaten, tortured, raped or anything like that.
4. No attempting to interfere with Enforcer Drones performing their function. The drones shall simply ignore bribes, bad attitude, verbal hostility, insults and similar with infinite patience, but they will not tolerate any violence towards themselves. They also believe that they have the absolute right to monitor human affairs. As far as they're concerned "Mind your own business" is something that people who are up to no good tell them. The approach they often will employ is to the rough effect of this.
5. General protection of property, infrastructure and the environment. Things matter, even if they are less important than sapient beings. They are willing to understand local laws on this subject and enforce them in this regard, so long as said laws don't interfere with them performing their other duties.

Each Drone is a more than capable detective as well as a beat cop. Sentencing is handled by specialized Arbiter Triumverates: trios of cores who pass sentences based on mobile bases. These bases also have holding cells which are comfortable, though since cores process cases quite quickly it will be rare for an individual to spend more than a day there.

Enforcer Drones will explain that unlike humans they're most definitely not Tabula Rasa. They are made with a purpose, namely to protect sapient beings which do have the ability to grow beyond their original parameters from developing along bad paths, and said purpose is set in stone. In addition to enforcement they'll also perform search and rescue operations and any Enforcer Drone would sacrifice itself to protect humans if there is no other recourse. They will use Lethal Force if it is the only option to neutralize individuals, but if it can reasonably be done they will use non lethal means.

So would you release the Enforcer Drones upon the world?

Zor

[FaxModem1]

Question, at what point does deprivation of resources, ala starvation or dehydration, become murder in the drone's eyes?

Because either A. the drones have to topple a lot of unfair regimes.

or...

B. there's a loophole here in order to get rid of people you don't want.

[Zor]

Question, at what point does deprivation of resources, ala starvation or dehydration, become murder in the drone's eyes?

In short when the problem is on a large scale (widespread famine) which can be fixed (there is more than enough food which could be delivered and distributed in a reasonable time frame to save large numbers of lives) but obstruction is being put up to prevent those things from being delivered.

Zor

[Khaat]

No. Unless there is an equal improvement in resource harvesting, processing, distribution, education, employment, entertainment, mental health.

Is meat murder? Are you sure?
Is abortion killing a sapient being? How about birth control?
How about the mentally ill? Brain injury patients? Surgical error? Misdiagnosis?
What about suicide? Assisted suicide? Drug/alcohol addiction? Morbid obesity? Minor obesity? Anorexia? Skydiving? Skateboarding? Motorcross? Indycar racing? Bad sushi?

What about the drones? If they have these capacities, they qualify as sapient, so self-sacrifice is a contradiction of their parameters.

"No Kill" only works when everyone has "enough", and sadly, we live in a world that does no such thing. Ideal World enforcers in an Imperfect World don't help, they merely point out what was already happening for those to lazy to see it.

"Just Say No to Nannybots"

[Tribble]

Humanity views the drones as an invasion force, declares war on them and things get nasty. Good news is that humanity now has a common enemy to rally against!

[Zor]

Since the first bit of this got cut off here it is...

In this scenario you are presented with a scenario in regards to humankind with a simple yes/no dynamic. If you say no, nothing happens. If you say Yes the Earth gets invaded by a force of artificial beings known as Enforcer Drones. Several factory ships will enter Sol System, collect some asteroids from the belt, move them into earth orbit, establish an industrial base and send down wave after wave of Drones to the Earth's Surface.

In truth there are a fair number of variants of Enforcer Drones machinery as well as associated infrastructure and robots. If you had to say what a Enforcer Drone is at it's purist it would be a small black tetrahedral computer about 5 centimeters across which can be slotted into a myriad of robotic bodies ranging from two kilometer long factory ships to small spidery emergency locomotion harnesses. Said computer has roughly human level intelligence with superior performance in certain respects (most notably reaction times). However, their most common robotic body that would soon become utterly ubiquitous to humanity if you choose them is that of a 50 centimeter long wedge shaped hovering machine with A set of side mounted modules and a pair of turrets on it's top and bottom. One of these carries both a laser and an electrostatic stunner, the other carries a tractor beam system allowing said drone to easily carry up to 300 kilograms of matter. Each drone can generate an energy field which can take an RPG hit before going down as well as project said shield in a number of configurations...

Now to some replying

Is meat murder? Are you sure?

Nope. Livestock are not sapient beings.

Is abortion killing a sapient being? How about birth control?

Not if it is done before the end of the second trimester. As for birth control that involves killing brainless cells.

How about the mentally ill? Brain injury patients? Surgical error? Misdiagnosis?

The mentally ill shall be monitored. As for surgical error that is not done with malicious intent.

What about suicide? Assisted suicide? Drug/alcohol addiction? Morbid obesity? Minor obesity? Anorexia? Skydiving? Skateboarding? Motorcross? Indycar racing? Bad sushi?

Euthenasia is allowed under certain circumstances given the consent of the individual. Addictions are self destructive behavior and are to be discouraged in accordance with local human law. Engaging in mildy risky activities that only adversely effect yourself is allowable. They will run safety inspections.

Zor

[Bedlam]

How do they decide what a biological or chemical weapon is?

Bleach can kill you but we keep it around in large quantites, what is a biological weapon? Deadly diseases naturally circulate in populations how do they stop them? How do they tell the difference between a sample needed to culture an immunisation and a sample which could be grown to kill millions?

[Starglider]

The reduction in existential risks alone justifies the deployment, if we take as given that the drones are completely reliable. That said at the stated technology level it's hard to imagine they could avoid capture and reverse engineering indefinitely.

[FireNexus]

The reduction in existential risks alone justifies the deployment, if we take as given that the drones are completely reliable. That said at the stated technology level it's hard to imagine they could avoid capture and reverse engineering indefinitely.

Would we need to? Since the drones have a significant technological advantage and the ability and desire to monitor everyone, it would seem damn hard to be able to use them towards ends they'd be unhappy with. Or even to disable or hack them.

While this could happen eventually, it seems to me that the timescales we're talking about are generations, over which there will be significant cultural changes. Especially given the stated ability and intention to "reprogram" difficult people. If you try to engage in murder or war, you're about to become a fully compliant booster for the drone government.

My thinking is that "reprogramming" criminals is crossing a line I'm not comfortable with, though. THe slapdroning, sure. But I don't know who created these little fuckers, or what their ends ultimately are. Nor do I know how far they'll go in determining that an act is murderous.

While I'd be happy to let them loose if I could be sure they're just friendly culture-style drones trying to make people's lives better, given the technological gap there isn't any way they could reliably convince me of such that couldn't be tricking me. The fact that their tech clearly allows for them to do whatever it is they want regardless and they offered an option gives me some assurance, and makes me think that there's no real difference what choice I make.

[FireNexus]

Also, giving the choice to one rando (one who is clearly predisposed to the kind of somewhat unpopular ethical framework that would justify their actions) is super suspect. When offers me the choice, what assurances do I have that they are presenting at face value their aims, and that those are to be our buddies and help us live long happy lives.

What assistance do they offer besides stopping war and murder? Does their industrial base assist in eliminating poverty? Do they offer us their artificial brainpower for medical advances? Will they be our friends and coworker's, merging into our culture, in addition to their official role, or do they function exclusively as an occupying force with shady aims?

[Q99]

Hm, reminds me a bit of Culture Drones, and a bit of Buck Godot Lawbots.

Also quite similar to how I've thought about programming such an array of robot lawbots for similar reasons. So... yes.

[Imperial528]

No.

In the initial chaos of deployment they will likely cause more damage than they could ever make up for, and in the end will create a society that has no knowledge on how to govern itself.

First, there will simply not be enough ships as stated in the OP (several usually doesn't exceed ten) to deploy everywhere in time to prevent significant (i.e. nuclear) response. Frankly, the image of these things descending from orbit may well look like a plague of stellar locusts to the unaware people on the surface.
While there are no existing mass-produced methods of reliably delivering a nuclear payload into orbit, I imagine that regardless of any assumed intent, the observation of these ships moving asteroids into intercept orbits with Earth will get enough of a ball rolling that at least a few of the anti-satellite missile systems could be refit with warheads and that existing ICBMs could have their guidance rigged to provide rough orbital attack capability, and so on.

My point however does not rely on these resistance attacks even succeeding; indeed, they will probably only mission kill one or two ships that could easily be brought back online by the survivors. The mass panic involved however could push paranoid governments and military leaders into making horrid judgement calls only justified by the fact that they believe their entire world to be in danger. Attempts at attacking the ships in orbit could lead to the high altitude detonation of high yield nuclear devices, destroying electrical grids for thousands of miles around each detonation, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands as medical equipment fails, cars lose power at speed, fire trucks fail to start, etc. These "enforcers" will likely reprogram those who gave such launch or detonation orders, but I would not blame them; as far as they knew, it could well have been a choice between causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, or allowing extinction.

Naturally, communication from the enforcers might mitigate this if they are taken in full faith, and my doubts to that aside, this leads to the next issue:

The very existence of the enforcers will reduce human ethics and culture to that not unlike the children of overbearing parents, leading to a world where the majority of people exist in an expression of either one of these states: resentment or fragility.
Resentment is very self explanatory, and while it makes for unhappy people, I do not consider it the main issue. The "enforcers" will likely reprogram countless persons out of it should they prove particularly pesky, the sheer evil of it be damned, all to prevent interference.
Fragility are the people who cannot tolerate hardship or perceived unfairness, who whine and cry when things don't go their way, and who are broken when reality is forced upon them. They are also people who are innocent of the ills of the world, shielded from them as they were, and who endure tremendous cruelty when they must face the world untempered.

This change will not occur overnight; indeed, I suspect it could take a century even. But the time will come when mankind under the yoke of these "enforcers" will have learned to live with them, and as a consequence, become unable to live without them.
Why need a judge when a drone knows all laws?
Why educate lawyers when the drones accept no arguments?
Why explore ethics when the drones enforce only theirs?

In time I suspect any government will be reduced to simple bureaucratic resource administration heavily integrated with the drones' presence. The moral impact of governance will be left unto them, as they will ultimately judge the outcomes regardless of who made the decisions. I would also expect the scale of government to be vastly decreased in rough proportion to the hold the drones will have over every aspect of human life, as the negative consequences of government become considerably greater with more people under governance. I expect the leading bodies of corporations down to perhaps middle management to also become so afflicted by the drones.

Then of course there is the countless loss of pre-industrial cultures across the world. I seriously doubt an isolated amazonian tribe's way of life would survive this interference, for example, and without ready access to even written languages in some cases, these groups will lack even the luxury of recording how they lived before, beyond what oral tradition the drones decide isn't quite talk of sedition.

Of course, so long as the drones are here, a status quo will arise and remain.

If they should ever leave, the society they will have built by their very presence will collapse into despair and anarchy without them. Likely not at once, and if mankind is lucky, it will return to roughly the same levels of corruption balanced with orderly life as before in most of the developed world, but the cultural loss will likely never heal, and humanity will never truly come to terms with this until it has been forgotten by time.

If the drones are as intelligent as the OP leads me to believe, they will likely predict along similar lines. By their demonstrated course of ethics I doubt they would weep for the damage to human society, but rather they would weep at the idea of them ever being gone. And so they would follow mankind wherever curiosity leads, always watching, always enforcing.

In time, they may even realize that they have made mankind a slave who works not for the benefit or pleasure of the master, but simply to avoid the master's wrath. Which begs the question: is a slave without duties free?

[Q99]

The very existence of the enforcers will reduce human ethics and culture to that not unlike the children of overbearing parents, leading to a world where the majority of people exist in an expression of either one of these states: resentment or fragility.

I really, really don't think so. Our culture and progress isn't dependent on violence or killing each other. There's still going to be suffering a problems to face- starvation, disease, etc.. We already have people tasked with doing exactly this (albeit not as well) and places with strong police forces like, say, Singapore, don't become more childlike.

Killing each other is something that's a hindrance to human culture, not a boon. Fear tends to make us act dumb. Killings often get us fixated on revenge.

This isn't like an old Star Trek episode where all 'negative' impulses are removed and we're left with one aggro Kirk and one listless and useless Kirk, it's just the stuff we discourage anyway due to it's negative effects actually get stopped, and where many people already don't engage in. It doesn't even stop agreed-upon fights, we can still enjoy violence!

If a normal human police force was good enough to prevent all these things, would that be bad? I think not.

[Imperial528]

The thing is, a normal human police force of this efficiency is still a human police force, made up of men and women who go home to their families at the end of the day and who experience hardships and failures that they need support for. And unlike the drones, a human police force is accountable to their populace.

These drones exist entirely outside of human interaction except when they need to enforce their laws onto humans, as I read it, and so will remove a large experience from human life of being responsible for making moral decisions and enforcing moral courses of action.

Pretty much all that will be left will be actions up to just beneath petty crimes, but even that is up to how anal the drones want to be about it. A schoolkid stealing a friend's candy as a joke is still a theft after all, but no human police force would see the need to get involved, their school probably won't either; the drones may.

Like I said, I don't expect this to happen overnight or even within a generation. But within a few dozen generations of this, I am pretty sure it will.

And I'm not just talking about killing, I'd be fine with these things if they just tried to prevent murder (and murder specifically). But they do more than that, and they are ever-present in their desire to prevent crime as they decide it. Sure, they follow local laws, but over time I feel like laws will be changed to suit them, especially with their inflexible moral code.

It seems to me like these drones are designed from the ground up to be a utopia's dystopian police force. They will over time remove so much of human experience that is integral to self-reliant societies, not because they prevent crime, but because they will prevent humans from preventing crime. And so they won't remove "negative" impulses, they'll simply teach people that they don't need to learn to deal with them on their own, because anyone who does act on them immorally will just have a drone give them a kick and a nudge and be put back in line. Which begs the question, how do these people respond when the drone doesn't come?

Not to mention the reprogramming. At least the death penalty, haunting as it is, lets someone die with their own mind.

[Q99]

Whether or not a human or drone does it is irrelevant to the level of enforcement and thus the effect on society.

Is crime inherently necessary for human progress and not infantilizing people? I don't think so, and if you want to make that argument I'll take a lot of convincing. Indeed, crime is usually crime for the exact opposite reason, we know it hinders our progress.

Is a robot stopping crime inherently going to produce vastly different effects? Again, it'll take a very strong argument to convince me that it's how mechanical something is and not it's actions.

There is also quite a lot of crime not covered. We wouldn't even be out of reason for significant human police forces.

[FaxModem1]

Question, at what point does deprivation of resources, ala starvation or dehydration, become murder in the drone's eyes?

In short when the problem is on a large scale (widespread famine) which can be fixed (there is more than enough food which could be delivered and distributed in a reasonable time frame to save large numbers of lives) but obstruction is being put up to prevent those things from being delivered.

Zor

So, the mafia could easily just keep on wiping people out, by locking their victims in rooms for a week, then coming back and dealing with the remains, since it would be on a small enough scale?

Of if that's not what you mean.

Nations with plenty of food are going to face coups by flying machines because they aren't feeding their neighbors. Hell, heads of food companies and transportation companies are going to be killed by these things for denying food to people they could deliver to in the name of profits. FedEx isn't delivering food regularly to the homeless in the cities they're based in? The FedEx board of directors all are killed. People will essentially HAVE to give to charity, at the barrel of a gun.

On the plus side, world hunger has been solved.

[Kingmaker]

So all I have to do to get away with a crime is refuse to cooperate with the police? As long as I'm not the one initiating the use of violence, it sounds like the drones will intervene on my behalf.

[Zor]

Question, at what point does deprivation of resources, ala starvation or dehydration, become murder in the drone's eyes?

In short when the problem is on a large scale (widespread famine) which can be fixed (there is more than enough food which could be delivered and distributed in a reasonable time frame to save large numbers of lives) but obstruction is being put up to prevent those things from being delivered.

Zor

So, the mafia could easily just keep on wiping people out, by locking their victims in rooms for a week, then coming back and dealing with the remains, since it would be on a small enough scale?

No. They are smart enough to understand the context of that action.

Zor

[Imperial528]

Whether or not a human or drone does it is irrelevant to the level of enforcement and thus the effect on society.

Is crime inherently necessary for human progress and not infantilizing people? I don't think so, and if you want to make that argument I'll take a lot of convincing. Indeed, crime is usually crime for the exact opposite reason, we know it hinders our progress.

Is a robot stopping crime inherently going to produce vastly different effects? Again, it'll take a very strong argument to convince me that it's how mechanical something is and not it's actions.

There is also quite a lot of crime not covered. We wouldn't even be out of reason for significant human police forces.

You're missing my point. My point is more than just "crime disappears" it's that a lot of the mechanisms the populace use to police themselves will over time be handed over to the drones, because the drones will do it anyway. And if the drones are going to do it anyway, and be on average better at it, there is no reason for people to do it.

It's not just the drone stopping the crime, it's that over time people will only associate crime being stopped with the drones. The drones' presence will make human moral decision making almost entirely obsolete outside of very small scale interactions, because any interactions of significant scale will be subject to the drone's interference regardless of human involvement. And why risk yourself becoming a potential criminal in the drone's eyes because your policy had ramifications that you couldn't see, but they could? It is much easier, and much safer, to just take every major decision and pass it by them. Over time, they will become the arbiters of moral conduct outside of perhaps the smallest scale of interactions, though given that they insist on observing things like consensual BDSM or rough sex, which are generally considered very private among humans, I feel like their idea of a small scale interaction will not cease at the individual. Indeed, they seem to be almost of the verge of thoughtcrime for some cases.

Crime isn't the only source of valuable lessons. Arguably, the question of how to deal with crime and justice has provided a much greater depth of human knowledge and introspection than the majority of human experience. But the drones already know what justice is and that they decide it. History shows that when faced with the easiest path, humans tend to follow it. The drones will enforce their justice whether we agree with it or not; the easiest path is to simply let them do it all.


A question to Zor, are the cerebral reprogrammings heritable? We know now that some genetic factors can lead to predisposition to crime, such as certain mental disorders. Will the drones seek to eliminate such a possibility? And if so, will they attempt to program it out of a person when indicated, or try to change their genetic lineage?

[Q99]

You're missing my point. My point is more than just "crime disappears" it's that a lot of the mechanisms the populace use to police themselves will over time be handed over to the drones, because the drones will do it anyway. And if the drones are going to do it anyway, and be on average better at it, there is no reason for people to do it.

One, the op doesn't seem to indicate they do that just because we ask.

Two, the majority of human effort is spent to things other than fighting crime to begin with.

Why would human overall capacity go down even if we did rely on the drones for fighting crime.

It's not just the drone stopping the crime, it's that over time people will only associate crime being stopped with the drones. The drones' presence will make human moral decision making almost entirely obsolete outside of very small scale interactions, because any interactions of significant scale will be subject to the drone's interference regardless of human involvement. And why risk yourself becoming a potential criminal in the drone's eyes because your policy had ramifications that you couldn't see, but they could? It is much easier, and much safer, to just take every major decision and pass it by them. Over time, they will become the arbiters of moral conduct outside of perhaps the smallest scale of interactions, though given that they insist on observing things like consensual BDSM or rough sex, which are generally considered very private among humans, I feel like their idea of a small scale interaction will not cease at the individual. Indeed, they seem to be almost of the verge of thoughtcrime for some cases.

You are reading a heck of a lot into that- absolutely nothing in the op suggests they get into pre-crime based on unforeseen consequences (especially as they aren't described as future-seeing superintelligences. Indeed, you can get away with 2nd degree murder once!)- even if they thought it would cause harm and stop it, there's no indication that they'd treat someone as criminal rather than warn them off or stop them. Especially because the same argument can be applied to dealing the police- and safety-focused jobs of all varieties!- in general, who actually do target people based on what they think will happen and such.

Basically, the op is offering us a reliable, trustworthy police, but outside our direct control. I feel if the argument against them involves them acting in a capacity far beyond that and that we'll somehow stop thinking about morals as a result... to involve so many assumptions that it's effectively a different question.

[Imperial528]

I may be projecting their intent to interfere beyond what the OP intends, this is true.

Regardless, I would still refuse on the basis of forced brain reprogramming being, in my opinion, worse than murder. Any sapient being has a right to their own mind, even a murderous one. They should at least be given the dignity of being allowed to die with their mind intact should society decide that their mind is not acceptable and they decide (or are unable) to change it.

And whether or not I am projecting the drone's will to interfere to a greater extent than perhaps the OP replied, I think that any society has some right to police itself and should not be subject to unaccountable external enforcement, which by the OP these drones are not accountable at all, as they will not accept negotiation of their primary directives. I draw the conclusion that they will not negotiate their directives from their fourth directive, for while debate may not be illicit, you're still effectively opposing their initiatives. I expect that unless you went and formed political movements to force or convince the drones to act differently, they will probably ignore you. Well, ignore you by just trailing you within earshot at all times if you've tried to convince them enough times.

[Sky Captain]

Appearence of such force would probably cause massive disruption, possibly even nuclear war. Imagine just how US or Russia would react if some outside force tried to forcibly disarm them. It would be wieved as full scale invasion by robotiic aliens. How could anyone be sure that it is not some kind of elaborate plot to disarm humans and make them incapable of fighting back when the masters of enforcer robots arrive.

If I were benelovent alien and wanted to help the world I would act more subtle like infiltrate my agents into major governments, try to reduce tensions between nations and generally try to get Scandinavian style governments into as many nations as possible.

[Zor]

Appearence of such force would probably cause massive disruption, possibly even nuclear war. Imagine just how US or Russia would react if some outside force tried to forcibly disarm them. It would be wieved as full scale invasion by robotiic aliens. How could anyone be sure that it is not some kind of elaborate plot to disarm humans and make them incapable of fighting back when the masters of enforcer robots arrive.

Because such aliens could have just sat in the asteroid throwing rocks at earth if they wanted to wipe out humanity.

Zor

[Q99]

I may be projecting their intent to interfere beyond what the OP intends, this is true.

Regardless, I would still refuse on the basis of forced brain reprogramming being, in my opinion, worse than murder. Any sapient being has a right to their own mind, even a murderous one. They should at least be given the dignity of being allowed to die with their mind intact should society decide that their mind is not acceptable and they decide (or are unable) to change it.

And whether or not I am projecting the drone's will to interfere to a greater extent than perhaps the OP replied, I think that any society has some right to police itself and should not be subject to unaccountable external enforcement, which by the OP these drones are not accountable at all, as they will not accept negotiation of their primary directives. I draw the conclusion that they will not negotiate their directives from their fourth directive, for while debate may not be illicit, you're still effectively opposing their initiatives. I expect that unless you went and formed political movements to force or convince the drones to act differently, they will probably ignore you. Well, ignore you by just trailing you within earshot at all times if you've tried to convince them enough times.

An understandable and solidly presented argument argument, even if one I disagree with.

Hm, on the brain altering thing, I view it as reasonable, on the basis that someone who murders is, by definition, ending other's minds, but you do raise the interesting possibility of 'should the guilty party be allowed to die rather than be altered?'.

[Simon_Jester]

Question, at what point does deprivation of resources, ala starvation or dehydration, become murder in the drone's eyes?

In short when the problem is on a large scale (widespread famine) which can be fixed (there is more than enough food which could be delivered and distributed in a reasonable time frame to save large numbers of lives) but obstruction is being put up to prevent those things from being delivered.

How do they figure out who's responsible for the obstruction?

Does refusing to donate food to end a famine because "it's my food, I paid for it" count as murder? If not, why not?

Whether or not a human or drone does it is irrelevant to the level of enforcement and thus the effect on society.

It's relevant because humans exercise discretion. Hence the example of a child stealing candy on a schoolyard. Drones don't exercise discretion.

Two billion robots flitting around watching everyone* are rapidly going to run out of real crimes to punish and start micromanaging people, punishing them for the most trivial offenses listed in their database. That's why there's a danger- because the drones are, in effect, helicopter parents. They punish everything, or at least punish so much of everything that there's very little human conduct left besides "unambiguously legal" and "what the drones punish."

*(or however many it is; Zor's wall of text made my eyes glaze over)

I may be projecting their intent to interfere beyond what the OP intends, this is true.

Regardless, I would still refuse on the basis of forced brain reprogramming being, in my opinion, worse than murder. Any sapient being has a right to their own mind, even a murderous one. They should at least be given the dignity of being allowed to die with their mind intact should society decide that their mind is not acceptable and they decide (or are unable) to change it.

Yeah. Zor seems to have... a thing... for the idea of forcibly changing people's brains (and bodies) because they're "incorrigible" in their resistance to his imaginary states.

I've seen some creepy examples of this.

Appearence of such force would probably cause massive disruption, possibly even nuclear war. Imagine just how US or Russia would react if some outside force tried to forcibly disarm them. It would be wieved as full scale invasion by robotiic aliens. How could anyone be sure that it is not some kind of elaborate plot to disarm humans and make them incapable of fighting back when the masters of enforcer robots arrive.

Because such aliens could have just sat in the asteroid throwing rocks at earth if they wanted to wipe out humanity.

You didn't read that. "Elaborate plot to disarm humans and make them incapable of fighting back" is very different from "wipe humans out."

Also, do you actually believe that ANYONE in real life will think "these robots that are intrusively monitoring us and destroying our weapons must be our friends, because if they were our enemies they would have just slaughtered us all?" That is not the way normal people think.